Chris Bota and Desmond Jones find their work-life balance in music

When Chris Bota was 5 years old, he took piano lessons and was taught to play classical music using the Suzuki method, a structured approach that emphasizes listening to a piece and then practicing until the student replicates the music. There are lessons, books, and recitals, and then one gets a grade and moves onto the next song. This worked for him until about the age of 9. At that time, he learned a cool new rock song and decided to play it for his music teacher, hoping for some approval or maybe a different approach to his lessons. It didn’t happen.  
Courtesy of Nathan Purchase
“A big reason why I do what I do now is from that experience,” says Bota, a founding member of the West Michigan jam band Desmond Jones. “I loved playing the piano, but everything I was gravitating toward, my teacher would pull me back into the classical world. A Coldplay album had come out, and I learned to play a Coldplay song and brought it to my teacher, and she just didn’t care. She said, ‘okay let’s move on and work on this Beethoven piece.’ So I ended up quitting piano at 13, and that is when I picked up guitar and casually played a lot of classic rock and punk rock stuff, and some metal.”

Desmond Jones explores different genres to find their sound

Bota has not looked back as he and other members of the band — Isaac Berkowitz (guitar, drums, vocals), George Falk (saxophone, vocals), John Nowak (drums, vocals, guitar) and Taylor Watson (bass) — have toured different parts of the country (Colorado, the West Coast and the Northeast) bringing their unique sound to their audiences. Influenced by the great jam bands such as The Grateful Dead and Phish, Desmond Jones also takes pride in its love of other genres, from jazz to grunge to classic rock. Bota loves jazz, Berkowitz and Nowak love the Beatles, Falk loves ska, and Watson loves the Dead and Phish and helps bring the band back to its roots. These favored styles by each individual band member have helped to form the eclectic sound of Desmond Jones.  
Courtesy of Nathan Purchase
“We take a lot of inspiration from (jam bands) in terms of a structure and how we are presenting the music with the idea of long sets and long, improvised sections of the songs and trying not to play the same song in the same way,” says Bota. “We just write and play what our interests are at the time and hope that originality and authenticity of just playing what we love and what moves us is going to show through the music and move the audience as well. What I see nowadays is this new idea of experimenting with genres and doing a collage of different styles and combining different aspects of music. Kind of like fusion.”
Courtesy of Loren Johnson and Sunfire Studios
Beginning to find a sustainable working life

Bota loves performing but admits that as he gets older, he also seeks a better work-life balance, a life not filled with playing gigs all the time. A main part of that is teaching music, something he started in 2015. Presently, he is continuing to build his client base at Seed Sound Studio in Grand Rapids, a space that he shares with his partner Hannah Laine, also a musician. His goal is to teach using a holistic educational system based on people’s individual goals and desires beyond just getting better at their instrument. He also wants to teach musicians the business side of the job — a part of the work that often gets glossed over — like making a demo, charting out a song, preparing a show, and selling tickets. The music industry has changed over the years, and he is hoping to prepare new musicians for it.

“The idea of ‘making it’ comes from being discovered back in the day where everyone holds your hand and walks you down the path to fame and glory,” says Bota. “But nowadays it’s so much focus on independent artists and a lot of big albums are done independently and not done in big corporate record labels and giant multi-million dollar studios.”

Bota enjoys teaching and working at Seed Sound Studio, but make no mistake, playing with Desmond Jones is what he loves to do. He understands now how to better balance it all, and in a strange way, the COVID-19 pandemic helped him and Desmond Jones realize that. 
Courtesy of Desmond Jones' Facebook pageCourtesy of Nathan Purchase
“I turned 31 last November, and as you get older, responsibilities pile up and things get more serious,” says Bota. “It’s been a struggle since COVID. We were on a really good trajectory as a band. In 2019 we played Electric Forest for the first time and got to open for some really good bands and then the pandemic hit, so it’s been hard to work past that as a band. Recently, we have been trying to find our groove. We’ve been touring a lot since August. We have come out of it with new business plans focusing on more quality than quantity in terms of shows. We’re trying to get out of that nose to the grindstone mentality and more in terms of a sustainable working life that we can do forever.” 

It seems Bota and Desmond Jones are on their way to fulfilling these goals as they continue to evolve as artists. Their new album “Rays of Light and Stardust” is out on all streaming platforms.